Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, to the
point that innovations are starting to help
treasury teams become more intelligent,
deliver greater analysis, and offer a truly
digital and automated experience. While
technology advancements are wide ranging,
those that have the most promise for corporate treasurers include:

Today’s reporting is presented in rows and columns of data, requiring manual analysis to scan
for exception and meaning. There is typically
no drill down and no ability to change the report on the fly to suit the CFO’s revised needs.
Further, treasury teams typically struggle with
the technology used to create reports, lacking
the expertise to build new reports or sometimes modify existing report templates. In
many cases, treasury resorts to pasting data
into spreadsheets to overcome this technology
barrier to effective reporting.

Help is on the way, however. The future
of reporting is visual, analytical, and voice
driven. Business Intelligence technology offers multiple drill downs within each presentation, composition of ‘a report’ via
multiple linked dashboards and visualization to drive new conclusions. The experience is incredibly different and oriented towards performance, KPIs and deep analysis.
With business intelligence, the report itself
becomes the answer. And with the right
business intelligence solution within your
treasury system, there is no outside help or
special skills to configure new and powerful
intelligence dashboards.

Robotic Process Automation

Robotic process (RPA) is the next generation
of automation for all software applications,
including treasury. While treasury robots
are very simplistic today, performing only a
fraction of what most treasury management
systems offer, RPA technology offers much
promise. RPA ‘bots’ will be programmed to
mimic any process, any procedure, and any
pre-determined series of tasks that are currently managed by people today.

Treasury management systems (TMS) that
were developed upon true could platforms
will simply build RPA components into the
technology, replacing older pieces of the
system with newer bots. Other TMS that
are not proper multi-tenant SaaS technology – which unfortunately represent many
systems in the market today – will have to
rebuild their entire platforms to support RPA
or settle for file interfaces with RPA systems.
The future of all software is robotic process
automation coupled with artificial intelligence to make treasury management systems self-learning robots within ten years.

Artificial;Intelligence

The limitations of software ‘bots’ are what
can be programmed by a person. Artificial intelligence, and specifically machine learning,
changes everything. Machine learning means
that software applications can self-develop
new capabilities based on data analysis and
managing exceptions. In essence, machine
learning artificially replaces the experience
of a person – extending the reach of a robotic
process from algorithmic programming to an
artificially, self-learning software application.
Artificial intelligence will transform how the
treasury team adds value to the organization,
creating opportunities focused on value generation rather than simply processing and reporting.

Blockchain/Distributed Ledgers
When most treasurers hear ‘blockchain’ they
think of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. While
bitcoin has no place in treasury, cryptocurrencies may provide a new source of liquidity
for cross-border payments and capitalization
within emerging markets. Blockchain – or
more accurately distributed ledger technology – offers a more compelling proposition.
Corporate treasury will see great value in the
new ways blockchain technology will enable
greater information transparency and simplified communication of documents, messages,
and confirmations. It is conceivable that any
multi-party information transfer can become
simpler, cheaper, and more secure using
‘blockchain’ distributed ledger technology.

APIs

APIs are not new technology, but they are newto treasury and are having a profound impacton the ability for technology platforms to in-tegrate and connect. Spurred by regulationin Europe, global banks have begun to opentheir cash management portals via API to out-side systems such as TMS and ERP. The effecton corporate treasury is a potential real-timeexchange of information, which not only en-riches the analysis that treasury can performbut also drives more valuable decision makingaround cash, payments, and liquidity.Further, the improved integration betweenthird party systems increases the value ofyour treasury management system, but le-veraging specialized cloud portals for calcu-lations, enriching treasury information, andmore complex decision making. APIs are anenabler to bring more intelligent treasurytechnology together into a single platform.

Making treasury more intelligent
To become more intelligent, treasury requires
better information, delivered more easily,
with a greater range of visualizations and
analyses. Treasury’s role will become even
more strategic as emerging technologies such
as robotics and artificial intelligence manage
the data and identify exceptions – leaving
treasury professionals to analyze, optimize,
and make effective decisions.

Treasury technology continues to evolve and
will only simplify our lives, paving the way
for efficient and effective treasury teams.
The key is to select the right technology providers who embrace innovation and strive to
match new technology with the emerging
needs of treasury.